A wide variety of mobile computing devices such as cellular telephones, pagers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and others are commonly in use. Software available for use on these mobile devices includes a wide range of applications including games, phonebooks, calendars, email, web browsers, and others. These applications, when executed on the mobile device frequently utilize resources of a Subscriber Identification Module (SIM) in the mobile device. The SIM is a “smart card” device consisting of memory and a processor that performs various functions such as performing security functions and maintaining a file system for storing information.
For example, a phonebook application may store entries in the file system of the SIM. The SIM will allow access to these entries only to authorized applications. If authorized, an application may update the contents of the file system to, for example, store a new phonebook entry. The SIM, through its security functions, may also allow an authorized application to read and/or update a user's Personal Identification Number (PIN).
Testing of applications that use the resources of the SIM generally depends upon testing the applications with the SIM that will be in use with the device upon which the application will be executed. Typically, these tests use a SIM device connected with a computing device, such as a personal computer, upon which the applications are developed and tested. In other cases, the applications are tested on mobile devices that use a SIM.
However, obtaining and keeping SIMs active can be very expensive such that testing applications with SIMs is costly. Moreover, since most SIMs allow only limited access to some features, such as reading or updating a PIN, a SIM can be used only a limited number of times to test those features which increases the overall cost of each test. Additionally, different types of SIMs may be used in various mobile devices. Therefore, thorough testing with SIMs results in the software vendor needing to obtain a large number of SIMs of many different types. It is with respect to these considerations and others that the present invention has been made.